Fiona Ma's 'garbage equality' bill signed

Published 9:31 pm, Friday, September 28, 2012

Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, urges lawmakers to approve her measure to increase the pay of the harbor pilots who navigate massive cargo ships through San Franciso Bay, during a hearing at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday, June 14, 2011. The bill would raise the annual salary from about $400,000 annually. The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association contends San Francisco Bay's pilots are among the best paid in the industry and that any increase will hurt Northern California ports' competitiveness. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) less

Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, urges lawmakers to approve her measure to increase the pay of the harbor pilots who navigate massive cargo ships through San Franciso Bay, during a hearing at the ... more

Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Fiona Ma's 'garbage equality' bill signed

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We're used to lawmakers giving their pet pieces of legislation interesting - and odd - titles, but one by Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, will be hard to top.

The bill, AB845 signed by Gov. Jerry Brown this week, prohibits cities and counties from passing laws or ballot measures that restrict the amount of trash from other places that can be imported into their dumps. It grew out of a decades-long spat between San Francisco and Solano County, where the City by the Bay sends a lot of its garbage.

In 1984, Solano County voters passed a measure limiting how much trash could be imported into the county each year. The legality of the measure has been debated in court for years; AB845 effectively nullifies that voter initiative.

Applauding the governor's signature in a press release, Ma trumpeted what she called her "garbage equality bill," which, according to the release, will "prevent discrimination of out-of-county waste."

We're not so sure that Solano County voters would see Ma's bill as an issue of "equality," but hey, it's hers to name.

Tech-savvy voters: California's online voter registration system appears to be off to a good start - more than 110,000 people took advantage of the change in technology in its first week.

It didn't break any records, however: With just over a month left before the November election, this time of year is always busy for county registrars and the secretary of state's office, said Shannon Velayas, a spokeswoman for the state agency. For example, at this time four years ago, the secretary of state's office received 191,000 paper registration applications in a single week. Counties received thousands more.

Still, Velayas said Secretary of State Debra Bowen is "thrilled by the high volume of Californians registering to vote or updating their registration using her website."

Let's go to the numbers: We've got a new poll looking at Propositions 30 and 38, the competing tax measures on the November ballot supported by Gov. Jerry Brown and civil rights attorney Molly Munger, respectively.

The poll, conducted by the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Times, found support and opposition among registered voters that is similar to what we've seen in other recent surveys for Prop. 30: 54 percent of those surveyed support it, while 37 percent are opposed.

The numbers for Prop. 38 don't look so good, though: 34 percent of those polled are in support and 52 percent are opposed. That's lower than other recent polls, though no poll has yet put Prop. 38 over 50 percent support.

The poll surveyed 1,500 registered voters in mid September and has a margin of error rate of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Probing Chevron: Two East Bay lawmakers plan to investigate whether they need to change state law to protect the public from incidents such as the Aug. 6 fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond.

Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner and Sen. Loni Hancock - both Democrats from Berkeley - said the fire "could have resulted in more severe consequences," and that lawmakers should review what happened, both to see if legislation is needed and find out what steps government agencies have taken in connection with the incident. They called for a legislative hearing.

"The important thing is to take positive and serious steps to ensure that these sorts of incidents do not occur in the future," Hancock said.

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